Imagine someone searching for orthopedic services, and your practice’s ad campaign pops up at the top of the search engine results pages. This is the desire of millions of orthopedic practices that are running PPC ads. But how do you do it? The answer is to implement effective strategies for PPC for orthopedic practices.
Do you know, traffic brought through PPC advertising yeilds 50% more conversions than organic advertising? This statistic showcases the effectiveness of PPC advertising over other digital marketing efforts. Strategically running PPC ads can help orthopedic practitioners get instant visibility and patient engagement. Not only that, the best part of running PPC ads is, you need to pay only when someone clicks on your ad.
If you are an orthopedic surgeon who is looking to run PPC campaigns for your practice, then this blog is for you. It will guide you through the benefits, strategies, and common mistakes of pay-per-click advertising so that you have a clear idea of how you must proceed.
What is PPC for Orthopedics?
Othopedic PPC is a digital marketing approach that orthopedic practices can incorporate to develop personalized ads in order to promote their practice, attract new patients, and generate high-quality leads. PPC requires you to pay a significant amount only when someone clicks on your ad.
PPC advertising helps orthopedic practices by placing their ads in a prominent position in search engines like Google and Bing, driving prospective patients who are actively looking for services such as “orthopedic clinic near me” or “knee replacement surgery” directly to the practice’s website.
If you want your otheropdeic practice to achieve instant visibility on digital platforms and drive immediate traffic to your website, then a PPC ad is the best option for you.
How is PPC Advertising Beneficial for an Orthopedic Specialist
PPC advertising can be beneficial for orthopedic specialists can numerous ways; we have discussed a few of them below.
- Offers Instant Visibility
In comparison to organic marketing, which takes quite a significant amount of time to show results, PPC yields effective results in a very short period of time. These ads prominently appear at the top of the search engine results almost instantly, ensuring that when a prospective patient in your area searches for “shoulder pain treatment,” your practice is one of the first things they come across.
- Hyper-Targeted Patient Acquisition
PPC can help with patient acquisition by allowing precise targeting based on demographics, geographic locations, and specific keywords. Through PPC ads, an orthopedic practice can target audiences who are actively searching for orthopedic services for specific conditions (e.g., ACL tear repair). This boosts the chances of attracting high-quality leads who are ready to book an orthopedic appointment.
- Cost-Effective and Budget Control
Orthopedists can completely control their ad budget, set daily limits, and maximum bids for keywords. You are only required to pay when a viewer clicks on your ad, guaranteeing every dollar is spent on engaging interested patients.
- Competitive Edge
In the highly competitive healthcare market, a strong online presence is no longer a need; it is a necessity. Pay-per-click advertising allows orthopedic practices to stand out from their competitors, including large-scale hospitals, by securing the top spot and reaching a wider group of patients.
- Measurable ROI
One of the best parts of PPC for orthopedic practices is its potential to track the effectiveness of a campaign in real-time. Orthopedic surgeons can seamlessly monitor key metrics such as the number of form submissions, phone calls, clicks, and even the number of new patient appointments that are generated from your ad campaigns.
This data-driven approach helps orthopedic clinics with constant optimization and guarantees a cost-effective and better ROI.
Strategies to Create High-Converting PPC Ads for Orthopedic Surgeons
In order to achieve instant online visibility, orthopedic practices must consider developing a high-performing ad campaign. So, here are a few tips to create an engaging and valuable ad campaign for orthopedic practices.
- Keyword Strategy for Orthopedic PPC Campaigns
Keyword research is the foundation of every digital marketing effort. Be it SEO or PPC, keyword research is a must. If you wish to successfully advertise your orthopedic surgery practice, you need to find relevant keywords for your PPC ads.
Suppose someone is searching for orthopedic services; they are likely to type in terms such as “best orthopedist near me” or “best ortho in the Netherlands” in their search bar. In order to make your practice get noticed by these individuals, you need to find relevant keywords and incorporate them in your ads.
Orthopedic practices can implement keyword research tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Google Keyword Planner to find relevant keywords for their ad. When you search for keywords, you must focus on local-intent and local intent and long-term keywords (keywords that contain three or more words).
Local intent keywords are search terms that demonstrate that a patient is looking for a product, information, or service within a specific geographic area. These can include keywords like “orthopedist in Brooklyn” or “orthopedist near me.” These keywords are even more important than long tail keywords, and understanding and implementing them strategically in your ad campaigns is a must.
Now, what are long-tail keywords?
- Long tail keywords help orthopedic practices reach relevant audiences as they are highly specific. For example, rather than targeting terms like “orthopedic services,” orthopedic practices must target “best ortho doctors near me,” “ortho specialists in Canada,” and “Emergency orthopedic doctors near me.” These keywords ensure that you are placing your ads in front of your prospective patients who are likely to convert into paying customers.
- And the second reason why orthopedists must consider long tail keywords is that short tail keywords are likely to have higher competition, as they are not very specific. As a result, orthopedic practices might have to end up paying more per click. By targeting longtail keywords, you can save more money as they have comparatively lower competition.
Steps to Conduct Thorough Keyword Research for Your PPC Campaign
- Determine your Goals: Before you start researching relevant keywords for your orthopedic advertising campaign, you need to understand your PPC goals. Determine what you are willing to achieve from your campaigns, such as driving more traffic or boosting sales.
- Identify your Audience: When you are done conducting keyword research, you now need to understand who your target audiences are. Imagine you are a patient who is looking for physiotherapy practices. What are your common pain points, needs, and what type of language are you likely to use to search for orthopedic solutions?
- Brainstorm your “Seed” Keyword: In order to brainstorm the “seed” keyword, orthopedic practices must list general topics that are associated with their practice and content. They must also get input from existing patients on their experience with your services and treatments.
- Expand your Keyword List with Tools: When you have figured out your seed keywords, you need to input them into keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, and SEMrush to find variations and relevant terms.
- Review Search Suggestions: For effective keyword research, Google’s auto-complete feature can also be of great help. Sections like “People also ask,” “Related searches.”
- Evaluate Keyword Metric: Identify your potential keywords based on their search volumes and keyword difficulty.
- Understand Search Intent for Orthopedic PPC: Categorize your keywords by what they want to achieve (e.g., transactional, informational) and guarantee that they meet your content’s purpose. Informational intent is the type where patients look for information on conditions, symptoms, and treatments. For example, “symptoms of muscle tear.” On the other hand, transactional intent is when patients are ready to take an action, such as requesting a consultation or making a phone call. For example, “orthopedic clinics accepting new patients.”
- Categorize Keywords by Topic: Categorizing keywords is an effective keyword research strategy for PPC for orthopedic services. As an orthopedic practice, you should cluster related keywords into thematic groups to inform your site structure and content strategy. You must prioritize ranking only those keywords that have potential impact and perfectly align with your marketing goals.
- Incorporate Strategically: Now implement your prioritized keywords to optimize your webpages and content.
- Track and Refine: Orthopedic surgeons must regularly monitor their keyword performance and make adjustments to their strategy as required.
Best Keyword Research Tools that Orthopedic Practices can Implement
Here are a few most preferred keyword research tools that you can implement in order to perform thorough keyword research for your orthopedic PPC ads.
- Google Keyword Planner
This is a completely free and widely used PPC keyword research tool that can help orthopedic surgeons search for new keywords and offer ad group ideas. Google Keyword Planner offers major metrics for each keyword, including average CPC (Cost-per-click) estimates, competition levels, and search volume. This tool is extremely helpful during the initial stages of keyword brainstorming.
Google Keyword Planner is directly connected to Google Ads, so if you are running your ads on the Google Ads platform, this tool can simplify your PPC ad campaigns.
Special Features of Google Keyword Planner:
- Effective Keyword Research
- Advanced keyword filtering on the basis of attributes
- Comprehensive research on forecasting and search volumes
- Keyword Bid Estimates
- Offers localized keyword data based on geographical location
.
- SEMrush
SEMrush is a specialized tool that offers online visibility management and an exceptional content marketing platform. It features more than 40 effective tools for market research, content marketing, SEO, advertising, and social media.
SEMrush offers an abundance of tools for effective keyword research:
- Keyword Manager: Can help orthopedic practices to organize, save, and manage more than 1,000 keywords, with the opportunity to refresh metrics for the most recent insights.
- Keyword Magic Tool: Let’s orthopedists explore keywords with metrics like keyword difficulty, trending data, cost per click, and search volumes.
- Keyword Gap: Through this tool, orthopedic practices can not only identify keyword gaps but also determine ranking opportunities by comparing their keyword profile with that of their competitors.
Special Features of SEMrush:
- Offers extensive competitor analysis
- Helps determine keyword difficulty based on top-ranking backlinks and keyword intent.
- Updated search metrics such as cost per click, search volume, and search trends.
- Provides recommendations for eliminating articles, unnecessary prepositions, and other irrelevant modifiers.
- Specialized keyword list optimization by getting rid of duplicate keywords and cross-matching for negative keywords.
- Ahrefs
Ahrefs allows orthopedic clinics to find relevant keywords from its database of over 8 million queries. This is an all-in-one SEO tool; orthopedic practices can analyze their competitors, optimize their websites, track their SEO rankings, and discover new content ideas.
Orthopedic practices that are looking for a solid keyword explorer for discovering and evaluating keywords across various search engines can leverage this tool.
Special Features of Ahrefs:
- Offers advanced metrics tracking of percentage paid vs organic clicks, clicks per search, percentage of clicks, and return rates.
- Allows Content gap analysis and keyword analysis.
- A site audit tool that can help orthopedic surgeons optimize their landing pages and other crucial site elements that might have an impact on their PPC campaigns.
- Keyword research with over 10,000 target keywords at once.
- Moz
Moz is a preferred keyword research tool for effective PPC for orthopedic practices. This platform features Keyword Explorer for keyword research, but it also offers rank monitoring, on-page optimization, and site audit. One of the standout features of Moz is the Keyword Priority Score. The score is calculated using various metrics such as keyword difficulty, search volume, and organic click-through rate.
This tool also offers a variety of free tools, including the Keyword Explorer, with a few restrictions on the number of search terms that you can explore.
Special Features of Moz
- Let’s track effective keyword metrics like search volume.
- Allows conducting competitive keyword analysis.
- Offers 1.25 billion keyword suggestions with more than 180 million keywords with new rankings.
- Gives keyword suggestions and ranks by country.
- Generates and saves a list of keywords with effective data export.
- Try Out Various PPC Advertising Platforms to Extend Your Reach
In order to gain PPC success, orthopedic practices need to try running their ad campaigns on various ad platforms to understand which platform is driving the most conversions, and users of which platforms are engaging the most with their ads. This section of the blog will discuss some of the most popular PPC platforms. So, let’s get started.
- Google Ads
Do you know, 63% of people have clicked on a Google Ad at least once? With this exceptional percentage, you cannot afford not to run your ad campaigns on Google Ads. This is one of the most widely used PPC platforms with a significant amount of market share.
- Microsoft Ads
Microsoft Ads (formerly Bing Ads) to date continues to be one of the most popular platforms, especially for the orthopedic segment. Due to less competition, Microsoft ads can offer cost-effective clicks. Although it has a much smaller market share in comparison to Google Ads, it is often used by an older and more affluent demographic. For example, if you are trying to reach people above the age of 50 with knee and muscle pain or stiffness, then this is the ideal platform for you.
- Facebook Ads
Do you know, 40% of marketers consider Facebook as one of their top three ROI drivers when it comes to social media platforms? Due to its large number of active users, orthopedic practices can leverage this platform to reach a wider patient base. This platform offers a wide range of ad formats, including sponsored posts and banner ads.
- Instagram Ads
As this platform is owned by Facebook, its ad platform works similarly to that of Facebook. Instagram allows orthopedic practitioners can create visual ads that appear in a user’s feed as they scroll through their Instagram. In this platform, you can create shoppable ads, where people can check out and seek your services even without leaving the platform.
- YouTube Ads
In today’s fast-paced world, customers would prefer watching a video over reading chunks of paragraphs. According to studies, 72% of people favour videos over text to learn about new products. By running effective PPC for orthopedic practices on YouTube, where they spend most of their time, orthopedic surgeons can tap into a wider audience. YouTube allows orthopedic practices to display their ads at the beginning, middle, or end of videos, to ensure you reach people at the right time.
A Brief Comparison Overview of the Best PPC Platforms
| PPC Platform | Target Audience | Available Ad Formats | Average Pricing | Unique Features | Ideal For |
| Google Ads | Broad and Diverse Demographic, covering all genders, age groups, and interests globally. | Display Ads, Video Ads, Search Ads, Text Ads | $1-$4 | Comprehensive reach through YouTube, Google search, and GDN. Solid targeting and analytics AI integrations and optimizations | Generating high-quality leads. Driving website traffic. Boosting brand awareness. |
| Microsoft Ads | Desktop users Slightly older demographic (35+) Higher household income | Audience Ads, Video Ads, Text Ads, Image Ads, Search Ads | $0.50-$1.50 | Seamless integration with AOL, Yahoo, and Bing. Lower cost per click rates Advanced LinkedIn profile targeting | Reaching a slightly older and more affluent demographic. Business with a tight budget Advertisers looking for high-value audiences. |
| Facebook Ads | Broad segments for interests and behaviours Demographic: 18-54 | Carousel Ads, Video Ads, Image Ads, Story Ads | $0.50-$2 | Strategic ad scheduling Precise location targeting Effective campaign budget optimization | Businesses that are looking to reach specific demographics. Establishing Brand Awareness Generating High-Quality Leads. |
| YouTube Ads | Broader, but usually a younger/ mid-age user base. Strong interest or behaviour targeting | Bumper ads, In-feed ads, Skippable ads, YouTube Shorts Ads, Non-Skippable ads. | $0.02-$0.20 | Advanced targeting options Interactive cards Auto end screens | Advertisers who wish to target specific demographics, like age and concerns. Businesses that are looking to retarget past customers. Fostering brand awareness |
| Instagram Ads | Younger demographics, mobile users. | Video ads, reels, stories, image ads, carousel ads. | $0.50-$3 | Engaging content styles and visual aesthetics. Interactive augmented reality filters for ads. Instagram reels and stories advertising. | Targeting lookalike audiences. Businesses that are looking to target broad audiences for brand awareness. Retargeting audiences. |
- Develop Dedicated Landing Pages that Align with your Ad’s Content
In the healthcare industry, a landing page is not a secondary asset, but they are direct driver of appointment bookings and revenue generation. By creating effective landing pages that are easy to navigate and offer clear, relevant, and direct information, orthopedic practices can not only enhance patient experience but also boost ad efficiency.
However, when developing landing pages, orthopedic practices must make sure each visual and element guides visitors to a specific action, such as scheduling an appointment or requesting a callback.
Key principles to consider when developing landing pages for your orthopedic ad campaign.
- Clear Purpose: Each landing page must correspond to a single service or patient action without implementing any unnecessary or irrelevant links to cause distractions.
- Accurate Messaging: The content of your dedicated landing page should clearly reflect the patient’s search intent and the message in your ad, maintaining a robust yet seamless progression from ad click to your landing page.
- Incorporating Trust Signals: Adding trust signals on landing pages serves a great for effective PPC for orthopedic surgeons. They act as social proof in fostering trust and credibility. Your landing page must contain certifications, patient testimonials, and patient success stories in order to make patients believe that you are legit and choose your practice over others.
- Optimize for Mobile: 61% of individuals have a positive opinion of companies that have a mobile-friendly website. This statistic shows how important it is for orthopedic practices to optimize their landing pages for mobile devices. By developing a website that is easy to use and navigate on smaller screens, orthopedic practices can drive more traffic to their website.
- Ensure a Quick Loading Speed: people stated that waiting for pages to load is what they dislike the most when browsing the Internet on mobile devices. So, optimizing the loading speed of your landing pages is a must. Slower speeds can significantly boost bounce rates. Orthopedic practices must optimize page elements such as images and fix technical aspects to ensure a fast-loading landing page.
- Strategic Call-to-Action: The CTA of your landing page must be clear and placed in a prominent position, so that it is highly visible. For orthopedic practices, it is crucial to create action-oriented CTAs (e.g., “Schedule your free consultation today!”) in order to encourage patients to take action.
Now that we have a clear idea of what essential elements you must implement on your landing pages, let us discuss the ways in which you can develop dedicated landing pages for your orthopedic ad campaigns.
- Set your Campaign Goals
In order to develop effective landing pages, the first thing you need to do is set specific and measurable PPC goals. This will allow you to determine how you want your ad copy to turn out, who you want your ad campaign to reach, what ad templates to use, and what elements you must incorporate in your ad campaign.
However, instead of setting multiple goals, orthopedists must stick to a single goal, as this will reduce the choices offered to your visitors, making it easier for them to choose a specific goal and convert, rather than confusing them and driving them away.
- Know your Target Audience
Orthopedic practices must develop their landing pages in a way that directly speaks to the audiences they are trying to reach. In order to tailor your landing page design and messaging, it is crucial to understand the needs, preferences, pain points, and demographics of your target audiences.
For orthopedic practices, you must focus on visuals, emotional appeal, and instant benefits. By creating an audience-focused landing page, you can make your audience feel valued and understood, increasing their likelihood of taking an action.
- Incorporate Attention-Grabbing Visuals
There is a saying, A picture is worth a thousand words. This is very true, especially in this fast-paced world, where people won’t stop to read chunks of paragraphs. Orthopedic practices must implement engaging visual elements such as graphics, images, and videos to back their advertising message and prevent patients from getting distracted.
But what type of visual elements can orthopedic practices incorporate in their landing pages?
- High-quality images showcasing your treatments and services
- Include videos that clearly explain your offerings or use testimonials to build trust.
- Make sure to keep your visuals consistent with your brand identity
- Use an Attractive Headline
If your ad content is 100% then your headline itself contributes 85% to it. Your headline determines whether your audience will stay or leave within seconds. An effective landing page headline must be clear, benefit-driven, and catchy.
When writing a headline for landing pages, orthopedic practices must keep it brief, clear, and influential. If your headline does not clearly convey your business value instantly, it is likely to boost your bounce rates.
- Add Social Proofs to Build Trust
When it comes to health, patients often feel skeptical about trusting a practice, especially one that they are completely unfamiliar with. And we cannot blame them, can we? But what we can do is show them proper proof that you are genuine to foster trust among them.
But how? By showcasing social proof like testimonials and reviews from satisfied patients. Additionally, including elements such as case studies, certifications, and staff credentials in landing pages can greatly help enhance the credibility of your orthopedic practice.
- Preview and Publish
You can not just publish your landing pages and leave them as it is. No landing page is perfect the first time, which is completely fine. The best orthopedists constantly test and optimize their pages in order to enhance their performance.
In order to simplify this task, orthopedic practices can leverage tools such as Optimizely, Google Optimize, or A/B testing software to help test various types of headlines, page layout, form lengths, and CTA buttons, along with colours.
- Develop Relevant and Trustworthy Ad Copy
The very first thing that will captivate the attention of your patients when they come across your ad will be your ad copy. An ad copy is written content designed to encourage patients to take a specific action, such as making a phone call or scheduling a consultation. Orthopedic practices must focus on developing compelling and informative ad copy in order to attract the attention of more patients.
But how can you create ad copies that actually work? By considering and implementing the crucial ad copy elements mentioned below.
- Write Clear and Catchy Headlines
Your headline is the first chance of making an impression in the minds of your potential patients, and you don’t want to miss it, right? So, for this, you need to ensure the headline of your ad copy is not only engaging but also conveys a meaningful message that compels them to click and watch it.
Orthopedic practices must aim for headlines that are straightforward, easy to read, and offer clear information.
Rather than using vague headlines such as “Improve your Health with Our Physiotherapy Services,” orthopedic practices can implement numbers in their headlines, such as “8 Effective Physiotherapy Exercises After ACL Tear Surgery,” or ask a question, for example, “Is your Back Pain Affecting your Daily Life?” A well-written headline can place your ad in the spotlight, making it a crucial part of your PPC advertising strategy.
- Incorporate Relevant Messaging
If you want your ad copy to work efficiently, you need to keep your message clear and relevant so that it directly speaks to your audience.
This means understanding their preferences, needs, pain points, and language. Orthopedic practices must personalize their ad content in a way that addresses their specific concerns and use language that perfectly aligns with their audience.
For instance, as an orthopedic surgeon, if you are running an ad for sports injury rehabilitation to target individuals who are affected by sports injury and looking for physiotherapy treatments, then your ad content must directly address sports injury concerns. “ACL Rehab Done Right: Get Back to Your Game with Our Specialized ACL Recovery Programs.”
- Showcase your Unique Selling Proposition
Your USPs are the core of your ad copy and are the most effective elements for developing effective PPC for orthopedic surgeons. It should clearly talk about treatments, what makes them unique from others, and how they can enhance the well-being of your potential patients. However, do not just list your treatments one by one; rather, focus on discussing how each of them can solve the problems of your patients.
For example, instead of simply stating, “We offer the best orthopedic treatments,” you can use something like, “Over 100+ five-star reviews for our knee pain treatment” or “Years of expertise in evidence-based treatments for chronic back pain.’
Remember, a powerful value proposition can not only set your orthopedic practice apart from others but can also foster trust among your target patients, encouraging them to make a move.
- Include a Compelling CTA
A call-to-action basically tells your audience what to do next. A misleading or confusing CTA can make you miss out on conversions. Orthopedic practices must write clear and action-oriented CTA that create a sense of urgency among patients. To create an effective CTA, orthopedic practices must incorporate verbs in order to encourage instant actions.
Orthopedic clinics must craft CTAs such as “Book a free consultation today!” or “Schedule an appointment.”
A CTA should be placed in a prominent position and must be engaging enough so that it successfully catches the attention of audiences. Customize your call-to-action to specific audiences and context, and leverage A/B testing to determine which design or messaging is working the best.
- Use your Storytelling Skills
Emotional appeal can remarkably enhance the effectiveness of your ad copy. Oftentimes, people make decisions based on emotions, so orthopedic practices can use storytelling to engage with audiences on a personal level.
Share stories about your orthopedic practice that evoke emotions such as urgency and nostalgia. Instead of simply listing down all the features, orthopedic practices must showcase real customer experiences and ways in which their treatments and services have positively impacted their lives.
You can also include before-and-after narratives. For example, you can show a person with crutches, living a miserable life, and after your knee fracture treatment, show them walking, dancing, going out with friends, and living a normal life.
Developing effective ad copies for your orthopedic practice is quite a task and requires proper expertise. In case you are just starting out, we suggest you to partner with a professional PPC advertising expert.
- Budgeting and ROI Measurement of Orthopedic Ad Campaigns
When you have a good ad copy, dedicated landing pages, and relevant keywords to implement, you now need to determine your budget. So, let’s get into it.
- How Much Should an Orthopedic Clinic Typically Spend on PPC Advertising?
Although there is no proper estimation of how orthopedic clinics should spend on their PPC ad campaigns, they are recommended to start with a minimum budget of $1000. Factors influencing this budget include,
- Targeted Keywords: Branded keywords (e.g., “FlexiFix orthopedic clinic”) are less competitive and much cheaper than high-intent and non-branded keywords (e.g., Knee doctor for Arthritis), which are very expensive.
- Market Competitiveness: A highly competitive market like orthopedics requires more budget in order to secure a prominent ad placement.
- Practice Size and Objectives: If you are a solo practitioner, your budget will be much lower than that of a large-scale orthopedic clinic with multiple urgent care facilities.
- Expected CPC and Conversion Rates
Although conversion rates in the orthopedic clinic can strongly vary, an average of 3.36% is recognized for the healthcare industry, with higher targets of 5-15% for particular, high-intent services. The expected CPC for an orthopedic clinic is also highly variable and depends on aspects like keywords, location, and competition. Let us discuss the expected CPC and conversion rates of orthopedic clinics.
- Conversion Rates
- Healthcare Industry Average: An approximate of 3.36% for paid search campaigns
- Ideal Target: A conversion rate of approximately 5% or more than that is considered ideal for orthopedic ads, with a 10%-15% target for high-intent services.
- Medium Variation: Different PPC channels have different conversion rates.
- Cost Per Click Rates
- Heavily Competitive: The CPC for an orthopedic clinic can be pretty high due to the competitive nature of the orthopedic advertising market.
- Keyword-Driven: The cost per click is highly impacted by the keywords implemented. High-intent keywords, such as those that signify an immediate need for a service, are much more expensive.
- Platform Variations: Like conversion rates, CPC also varies by platform, with LinkedIn ads having a significantly higher CPC than other platforms.
- Tools to Track ROI:
Accurate ROI measurement is not only crucial to ensure an effective budget allocation but also for effective PPC for orthopedic practices. Here are a few tools that can help orthopedic specialists track their return on investment
- Google Ads Dashboard: The built-in dashboard offers crucial insights into metrics like conversion volume, click-through rates, and cost per click. Orthopedic practices can find detailed reports on how their ad campaigns are performing on the Google Ads Help Center.
- Google Analytics: Google Analytics is a great platform that can help ortho specialists track user behaviour on their website after they click on their ad. It offers vital information on which campaign is driving the most relevant traffic and patient actions. (e.g., contact form fill-ups)
- Call Tracking Software: A lot of potential patients favour booking an appointment over the phone. A call tracking software can help orthopedic practices attribute phone calls to particular ad campaigns, offering a clear picture of lead generation.
- Implement Ad Extensions to Encourage More Clicks
Securing a prominent position in the search engine results pages is not just a need; it is a necessity. Especially with the top 3 listings in Google search results getting 54.4% of clicks, orthopedic practices must consider it.
But with so much competition in the orthopedic market, it is quite difficult to reach the top spot. So how do you do it? By implementing ad extensions to your ad campaigns. Ad extensions are considered to be valuable assets for Google and offer great advantages by pushing your practice up to those crucial spots.
This makes it easier for patients to find your practice and engage with it even before they get to your website.
Here are a few ad extensions that orthopedic clinics can implement in their ads.
- Callouts
A callout extension allows orthopedic practices to add additional descriptive texts right below their ad copy. These can contain USPs “Same-day appointments,” “Board Certified Surgeons.”
This extension can help orthopedic clinics showcase their special attributes or the benefits of their services and treatments.
- Location Extensions
The location extension allows orthopedic specialists to seamlessly display their clinic address, phone number, and a map marker beside their ad text.
By offering this information in their ads, orthopedic practices can make it easier for their patients to track their practice, leading to higher foot traffic.
- Call Extensions
The call extension helps an orthopedic practice to display a clickable phone number directly in their ads. This simplifies the calling and appointment scheduling process without even visiting your website.
- Sitelink Extensions
By implementing this extension, orthopedic practices can add direct links to important pages like “Meet Our Surgeons” or “Schedule an Appointment” to help patients navigate crucial actions instantly.
- Structured Snippets
Through structured snippets, orthopedic services can (e.g., “Orthopedic”) to help patients instantly determine what your practice is about.
- A/B Test with Different Ad Content to Create the Best Ads
A/B testing is vital to ensure a successful PPC for orthopedic specialists. This is a method by which orthopedists can compare two or more versions of an ad to see which performs better, leveraging data to make informed decisions to create the best ads.
How can orthopedic practices A/B test for their Ad Campaigns
- Define your Objective
Before you start, you need to determine what it is that you are willing to achieve through this test, such as boosting engagement, conversions, or clicks.
- Design a Hypothesis
When you have a clear idea of what you want, you need to create a clear hypothesis for your test. For instance, “Changing the image from a treatment alone to an image of someone who is going through the procedure to increase clicks.”
- Create Ad Variations
- Orthopedic practices must create two or more versions of their ad
- Guarantee that each variation is identical except for a single experiment you are testing (e.g., ad copy, headline, and image, or CTA).
- Run the Test
- Orthopedic practices need to create a campaign in order to showcase their various ad versions to two different, easily comparable segments of their audience simultaneously.
- Now you need to allow the test to run long enough so that it becomes easy for you to collect statistically significant and relevant data.
- Avoid changing any settings, such as traffic allocation, when you are running your orthopedic ads.
- Evaluate the Results
- In order to evaluate the results, orthopedic practices need to compare the performance of each of their ad variations against their initial goals.
- Implement the information to determine which version has performed better.
- Incorporate the One that Wins
- Orthopedic practices need to update their campaign in order to implement the winning ad version.
- You can then incorporate the insights that you gained to craft new variations for testing in the future.
- Leverage Geo Targeting for Local Reach
In this heavily evolving world, orthopedic practices must constantly adapt to new technologies and strategies to stay ahead of the competition. One of the most powerful tools to use is geo-targeting advertising.
Geo-targeted ads allow orthopedic practices to successfully and more accurately reach local customers, leading to greater engagement and conversions.
With the growing dependency on mobile devices to search for health-related information, geo-targeted ads can be an effective option in seamlessly reaching patients.
Location-based mobile ads can appear when patients search for orthopedic practices near them, check map applications, or go through health-related content. This instant visibility makes geo-targeted ads an invaluable tool for driving more foot traffic to their clinics and increasing appointment bookings.
How to Develop a Geo-Targeted Ad Strategy
Creating an effective geo-targeted ad strategy includes setting clear goals, choosing the right location, identifying the target audience, and developing targeted ad content. These elements are crucial to guarantee maximum engagement and success of your ad campaign.
- Setting Clear Goals
Whether you are looking to increase appointment bookings, enhance brand awareness, or engage with local patients, having a fixed goal is a must.
For example, if you are willing to enhance your brand awareness, the tactics you will use will not be the same for increasing appointment bookings. This is why orthopedic practices must align their ad strategy with their specific business goals in order to make sure that every ad serves the right purpose and offers fruitful results.
- Identify your Target Audience
Go beyond basic demographics in order to determine their location-based behaviours, preferences, and needs. This includes evaluating data to identify the location, gender, and age.
Understanding the needs, preferences, and common concerns of your target patients allows you to create more personalized ads. For example, if you are targeting young people who are actively engaged in sports, you might showcase your sports injury treatments. On the other hand, if you are targeting an older demographic, you must showcase your exercise therapy for knee pain or balance training programs.
- Choose the Right Ad Platform
Different ad platforms feature different levels of geo-targeting capabilities. So, choosing the right platform is vital to reach local customers and is a vital factor for successful PPC for orthopedic practices. Some of the most popular options include Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and Instagram Ads, each having unique geo-targeting potential.
Facebook and Google Ads offer effective geo-targeting tools that allow orthopedic practices to focus on specific locations. Orthopedic practices must take their time and strategically choose the right platform that perfectly aligns with the online behaviour of their target audience.
- Implement Local Keywords
Orthopedic practices must implement location-specific keywords in their ad copy in order to enhance search relevance. For example, as an orthopedic service provider, you can add local keywords such as “physiotherapist near Dallas” or “emergency physiotherapist near me.” This helps you easily connect with patients located near your clinic who are looking for orthopedic care services.
- Optimize for Mobile Devices
As most of the geo-targeted ads are displayed on mobile devices, orthopedic practices must make sure that all their landing pages are mobile-friendly, have fast loading times, include clear CTAs, and feature seamless navigation to enhance conversion rates.
- Write Targeted Ad Content
Orthopedic specialists need to create engaging and relevant ad content that resonates with the needs and clearly addresses the concerns of their target patients. In order to create hyper-targeted ad content, you need to leverage clear, engaging language, high-quality visuals to capture attention.
Including clearly visible CTAs can help motivate local patients to take the desired actions, such as visiting your physical clinic and website. Make sure that the pattern and relevance of your ads establish credibility and build trust among your patients. Orthopedic practices can implement local references, such as highlighting a local event, to make their ads more relatable to patients.
Common PPC Mistakes Orthopedic Clinics Must Avoid
- Not Using Local Targeting
If an orthopedic practice does not use local targeting, then they are likely wasting their funds on advertising to audiences based on locations where they have no customers. This mistake includes a lack of geographic targeting, which might lead to lower conversion rates and a very low ROI.
To avoid this mistake, physiotherapists must implement geo-targeting or local targeting by setting up campaigns to show ads in specific regions and areas and to eliminate areas where your ads are underperforming or irrelevant.
- Sending Traffic to the Homepage Instead of a Landing Page
Another major PPC mistake that almost every business makes is sending its paid ad traffic to the homepage rather than a landing page. Sending ad traffic to a homepage is not very effective, as the homepage is more cluttered, containing a lot of information that was not there in the ad campaign, which might leave visitors confused.
On the other hand, landing pages are more focused on a single goal and contain a specific CTA. Sending ad traffic to these dedicated pages might increase conversion rates. Orthopedics must focus on developing a good landing page that not only guarantees a relevant and seamless experience but its content must also aligns with their ad’s message.
- Ignoring Mobile Users
In today’s world, the majority of website traffic and ad clicks come from mobile devices. Many orthopedic practices often make the mistake of focusing on desktop users rather than completely ignoring mobile users.
Look, we are not saying you should not optimize your website for desktop devices, as 35.96% of traffic comes from them. But, besides optimizing your landing pages and PPC ads for desktop, you need to optimize them for mobile devices as well.
This is because your ad may appear fine in large screens like desktops and laptops, but it often becomes cluttered on mobile screens. A poor mobile experience can be dangerous as it can drive away patients instantly. By ensuring a fast loading speed, engaging CTAs, and creating mobile-friendly ads, orthopedic specialists can ensure a positive mobile experience.
- Failing to Use Ad Extensions
Ad extensions are a great way to make your PPC ads more effective. These elements can allow orthopedics to add more details to their PPC advertising, making it more engaging and generating more interest. Adding location extension can help orthopedic practices to add location information of their practice, call extensions can help surgeons add contact information, making it easier for patients to directly contact them, and review extensions can help orthopedics display positive third-party reviews directly in their search ads.
Ads with extensions appear more prominently in search results, get higher click-through rates, and offer visitors more options to take action, like scheduling an appointment and filling up a contact form.
Conclusion
PPC for orthopedic surgeons is vital for achieving instant visibility and getting noticed more easily by potential patients in the highly crowded market. By identifying and implementing the best PPC practices mentioned above, orthopedic practices can develop high-converting PPC ads that can not only drive more conversions but also help get traffic to their service pages. However, to achieve PPC success, orthopedic practices need to watch out for some of the major pitfalls of advertising and avoid repeating them. If you are someone who is just starting out, we would recommend that you partner with an expert orthopedic marketing agency that offers specialized and focused orthopedic PPC services.
